Posted on

Robster

I woke up a little early for me on a Saturday, and not to get to the beach, although I certainly wanted to. I went over to mom’s to help her with Christmas cards. We spent some nice time together. Both parents thanked me repeatedly, but I was honestly grateful for something to do with my mom.

Came home for a short nap, then went to the office. I didn’t have to go in, but I knew I’d have a better Sunday if I took care of a few things Saturday. While I was there, I wrapped gifts for my office mates. Wrapping gifts always puts me in the Christmas spirit, and I liked getting the injection a full week before the actual day. I think this bodes well for the days leading up to the holiday.

I still have a couple of gifts to pick up.

Recent spins: I’m revisiting 2021 releases I enjoyed, toward my year-end best-of list. Most of Thursday and Friday I had Evergrey’s Escape of the Phoenix on repeat. Wednesday it was Soen’s Imperial, which may be my favorite album of the year. Right now I’m spinning Einherjer’s North Star, not because I expect it to make the final list (I don’t) but because I couldn’t remember it very well.

I haven’t been as mood-swingy today as I have been the past week. I think part of it is the slow news day. These days, I listen to news broadcasts via their podcast releases, since I’m not home all the time as I was the year and a half I mostly worked from home. PBS Newshour with Judy Woodruff and World News Tonight with David Muir. They were both very, very light Saturday. I know there’s an important lesson here but I’m not ready to deal with it. Despite seeming evidence to the contrary, I think it’s better to be informed these days. Even at the cost of my emotional health.

Breakfast was overnight oats. For a late lunch, I stopped at Jolene’s Market, the airport location. Jolene’s has a prominent spot in the Chinatown Cultural Plaza, where Regal Bakery used to be (Jolene is the daughter of the Regal founders), and opened big some time ago with its lobster roll. Lobster rolls are super trendy in this town, and I think Jolene’s was the instigator.

The airport location is super casual — it’s a walk-up window with a couple of picnic tables — and it’s open early, I guess partially because it’s still a bakery too. The walk-in bakery with its display cases is still there, next to the walk-up window. So yeah, you can get a lobster roll at 5:00 in the morning if you want. I haven’t done it yet, but one of these mornings before I go to the beach I’m totally going to do it because I can.

So for lunch I had the lobster roll, and I ordered a fried chicken salad to go. That was my dinner. The lobster roll was quite good. I tried it once, the day before my birthday two years ago, the night Reid and I went to Patton Oswalt at the Hawaii Theatre. I remember liking but not loving it then, but I really liked it today, my second try. It’s quite a sandwich.

The fried chicken salad is a large spring mix salad topped with pieces of boneless fried chicken, and it was outstanding. I saved some for breakfast or lunch Sunday.

I snacked on pistachios at the office, then some beef jerky at home.

When I was still at UH Manoa, living in the BSU dorm, JB and I thought it would be cool to bring home a live lobster from Safeway and keep it as a pet in the aquarium we had in the dorm lounge. We had a dorm-mate named Robert whom we sometimes called Robster, and thought Robster the Lobster would be a great name for our new pet.

I went so far as to visit a tropical fish store I liked (stories for another time; when I was a kid my father had as many as twenty aquaria in the house, and I’ve kept two at once a couple of times) to ask about keeping water temperatures cold enough for lobsters. The chillers you’d need were far too expensive for a stupid novelty idea like keeping a lobster as a pet in a dorm lounge, so we quickly abandoned the plan, but one of these days I might do it.

Posted on

Everyone needs a panda hold onto

End of a week. It’s nearly quarter to five Friday night and of course I shouldn’t still be up, but I did the thing again.

I just stood on the scale after avoiding it for a few days. Pleasant surprise. If my scale is to be believed (and I’m seldom convinced it is), I’m down seven pounds in three weeks and I’m down seventeen pounds since June 1. It’s been something of a roller coaster in between, so I’m really not looking back to June 1, the day I brought the scale home from Target.

However, the three weeks thing is a big deal to me because I’ve been actively trying to drop some pounds. More on that later.

We had our holiday party at work this afternoon via Zoom, as we did last year. It was pretty fun for a Zoom gathering. We had a couple of games and a fun gift drawing based on our performances during the games. It was also blessedly short, but of course its being (comparatively) brief means it was quite lacking in interpersonal goodwill, the vibe I most like about our holiday gatherings.

This stupid virus.

I’m feeling super down about the news these days, and the news is not especially bad. It’s just the normal bad. I think I’m feeling super sensitive to it lately.

Thursday I finished the book I’ve been reading during my lunch breaks. Every Day the River Changes: Four Weeks Down the Magdalena (2021) by Jordan Salama. I don’t read very much travel writing, yet I always enjoy it when I do. Saw mention of it on Twitter one day and bought it on impulse. And yeah, the title.

Today I got into Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021). So far so good. I’m leading a book discussion group in the office and this is our new selection. I didn’t select the novel, but I’m glad we’re reading it. I’ve meant to get into Ishiguro for a super long time.

Breakfast was overnight oats. Yes, I’m back on the overnight oats train. Lunch was at Panda Express: orange chicken and string bean chicken with super greens. That super greens side is the draw for me. Broccoli, cabbage, and kale. It’s a short walk from the office and by the time I have lunch, there are very few fellow diners. Good space for reading.

Dinner was a small bowl of granola with yoghurt (the yoghurt I made in my Instant Pot last weekend) and raw honey. Second dinner several hours later was a couple of quesadillas with whole-wheat tortillas. Those whole-wheat tortillas, I tell you, are not terrific. At the office, I snacked on pistachios. At home in the evening, I had two palmsful of popcorn: the Smartfood popcorn with Cap’n Crunch crunchberries mixed into it.

Five minutes after five. To bed.

Posted on

Friday 5: Bad Mood Food

I’ve had a long, busy day, and I’m unwinding in the boba cafe, which closes in thirty minutes, so I’m going to try to write this in 20, leaving me time to pack up and visit the lavatory.

From here.

  1. What are you most likely to reach for when you stress-eat?
    Ice cream is my depression food. Chips are my stress food, at least lately. And I’ve downed a ton of them at work this past week and a half. It’s not good. It’s helping me cope, but I can’t keep relying on it — I’m trying to drop weight, not add chips. But grrrrrrrrrrrr this group project at work is taking a toll on me. By the end of Friday I felt wrung, like a chamois. It’s affecting the rest of my life, too. I lost sleep Monday night because I was so annoyed about a scheduled 90-minute meeting I thought could be an email. The meeting turned out not to suck, and we got good work done, but I still don’t think it was necessary. Now WHERE THE HECK DID I PUT THOSE DORITOS?
  2. When were you last disappointed by a meal?
    The frickin’ Popeye’s chicken sandwich was supposed to be available last week. The stupid Popeye’s app even TOLD me to go get it. Turns out the app for some reason doesn’t even work in my region (beyond sending me notifications) and the Popeye’s in my ‘hood had signs up all over the restaurant saying the chicken sandwich was coming soon. So I ordered chicken fingers and they were on the downside of okay. So annoying; I should have ordered chicken but I was trying to write while I ate, and I didn’t want to grease up my fingers, so I could type. Blasted chicken sandwich and crappy chicken fingers. Two disappointments in one meal!
  3. What food are you sad you can’t get anymore?
    They added a thin layer of caramel to the Whatchamacalllit bar in the summer after my junior year. It was a perfect candy bar before that. It’s still good but it’s not nearly as good as it used to be. KC Drive-In shut down 20 years or so ago, so the legendary chocolate ono-ono shake is but a memory. I wrote it about it in my NaNo project, so I’m feeling the nostagia now.
  4. For what food will you make an exception to a personal rule?
    I don’t like to get food on my hands, so eat a lot of finger foods with a knife and fork, but I make an exception for wings. Wings are among my favorite foods, and you can’t eat them with a knife and fork.
  5. What’s something you really like but would never order while dining out because you have it at home all the time?
    There are fewer items on this list than there used to be, because I’m so busy and I typically dine alone. I’m a sucker for corned beef hash when it’s made in-house, and I used to have the canned version all the time at home, but I’m trying not to have processed meats at home. So I’ll order corned beef hash even in joints where I know it’s out of a can, once in a while when I want to indulge. With a sunny-side-up egg and some rice, it’s one of my favorite breakfasts.

Yay. Got it done in 15 minutes.

Posted on

Friday 5: Food Mood

From here.

  1. What’s the best striped food?
    Someone else said salmon, and I really wish I’d thought of that. My first thought was Fudge Stripes cookies, which aren’t really that great. Then I was chatting with Sylvia the other night. She wants to make Japanese-style potato salad (mmmmm…) and asked if I thought Kewpie mayo was a must. I said the only thing Kewpie mayo is a must for is okonomiyaki. Bing. There’s my answer.
  2. What’s the best spotted food?
    Crush Girl has a blouse that reminds me of a certain fruit I’m fond of, so of course that’s the food I want to name here. Really, though, how could it be anything other than vanilla bean ice cream? Great. Now I’m craving ice cream.
  3. What’s the best layered food?
    Why are layered foods so amazing? Tiramisu, ice cream cake, seven-layer dip, loco moco. Mm. The winner is clearly lasagna, though.
  4. What’s the best swirly food?
    Helloooooooo Cinnabon.
  5. What’s the best black-and-white food?
    I’m going comfort food here: nori tsukudani and rice. I only just learned the word tsukudani now. I had to look it up because in our house we just referred to it by one of the brand names we liked (Gohandesuyo!). When we were kids, my sister and I always called it “mushy nori.” My mom, the first time she heard us saying it (when I was like 6 and my sister was 4), told us not to call it that. Because mushi means bug. Hahaha. And if you look at nori tsukudani closely, you couldn’t swear that it wasn’t made of blended bugs. So of course that’s what we always called it when my mom wasn’t around. In college, it was a frequent breakfast, and my roomie Captain Daveman was grossed out by it. Wouldn’t even try it. Kept calling it “that black stuff.” But it is freaking delicious. That stuff is straight-up umami paste, and it will always give me feelings of being taken care of, which I suppose is really what comfort food is, right? The stuff in the photo up there isn’t as black as the stuff I usually have, but better photos were from personal blogs and I didn’t want to steal from them. This one’s from an online retailer and therefore fair game.